


Memories

by DevinTowerwood



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: AU, Angst, F/F, F/M, Many time travelers, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-02
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-24 10:22:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4915876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DevinTowerwood/pseuds/DevinTowerwood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various timelines appear as, through various means, different denizens of Arcadia Bay gain access to aspects of Max's rewind power. In exploring their memories, more of these characters in their present forms are examined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kate Marsh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kate Marsh relives a happy moment from her childhood, and in it, is reminded of her personal strength.

“So, how does this work?”

Kate had brought her picture along across the hall. She had been back at school for five days, and Max, Brooke, Warren, and Alyssa had seemed to be the only people comfortable enough to try and talk to her in that time. While Victoria had been able to visit her in the hospital, some motivation had failed her, and she settled for not so much as meeting the bright-eyed Christian girl’s gaze, which was in a way an improvement.  
In the hospital, though, on Saturday, just before Kate got out, Max had come to her with a proposal. A fantastical one, and if it hadn’t been for a very display from the brunette herself, Kate would not have believed a word of it possible. Max offered her the possibility of going back in time. She said she could not undo what had happened to Kate, but she could give Kate the possibility of creating her own version of things. It was an extraordinary idea, but Max had demonstrated an ability to read minds, teleport, and otherwise accomplish the impossible, and Kate was willing to believe in her strange genie of a friend.

“You just need to focus on the photograph as hard as you can. When you think you’ve got it - not just the photograph, but the memory, as clear as you can - I’ll push you back in time, into this variable point. All you’ve got to do is remember; I’ll handle the rest.” Max was too busy brushing Kate’s forearm as they sat across each other, closely placed between Max’s couch and her chair pulled up against the couch - she didn’t really take the time to take a look at the photograph.

Kate nodded briefly, trying to wrap her mind around what would happen. Perhaps this was all some incredibly elaborate prank and she was being filmed right now? It would just be some gag to laugh at for a few days? … no, no, Max was not like that, she was a friend.  
“Okay … okay. I’ll try.”

Kate lifted the photograph close to her face, and concentrated as hard as she could. It was a selfie - an early form of selfie, actually taken by Max Caulfield herself. It featured Maxie (as she had been affectionately called at the time), Katie, and Alyssa at a sleep over. Twizzlers, goldfish, decorated crosses all over the place (it had taken place at Alyssa’s house, whose family was highly catholic). Kate just seeped in the memory … and then, there was a flash.

She blinked her eyes for a moment, adjusting to the dim, artificial lighting of the room after the brief flash, and looked around her. Maxie sat back from supporting herself on Kate’s shoulder, leaning back against one of those large beanie bag chair thingies so popular among young teenagers while she drew out the fresh photograph. Alyssa sat back down flat after her brief lunge to photobomb, grinning wide as she had to show off her braces while placing a peace sign obnoxiously close to the camera’s lens, cutting off about half of Maxie’s face in the process.  
Kate was in a daze, but neither of the girls seemed to immediately notice, so Kate tried to redirect her attention to the source of artificial light: a 90s anime by the name of Sailor Moon in its original English dub. God the voice acting was terrible - Kate had discovered she preferred the original Japanese some years later, when Max had been off in Seattle. However, now that she thought about it, she had missed the Sailor Says portions at the end of episodes …

Oh, goodness, now she could see why they were having a sleep over! They had just started the second-to-last episode of season 1; you know, the one where everyone is brutally murdered in a style completely inconsistent with the rest of the show. Although, the English dub officially counted them in the ‘dark kingdom’ or whatever, but they were totally dead. The Japanese version was a lot more hard core and a loooot gayer.

Kate tried to speak up a little, to integrate herself back into this memory. She cleared her throat, a little surprised at the pitch and timbre of her voice, “Jupiter is my favorite,” she confessed, in preparation of her imminent demise. Oh god, she remembered this now - they were all going to freak out and cry so loud by the end of this episode that Alyssa’s parents would ask them to turn it off but they couldn’t because there was only one more episode left in the season well then they’d have to try and keep it down people were sleeping some people still had to work on Saturday mornings …

Maxie was waving her polaroid avidly, hoping to see the shot developed as soon as possible - “Well, she’s kind of the mom of the sailors, isn’t she? And you’re kinda like the mom, so that makes sense. She’s so sweet.”

Alyssa seemed to concur pretty quickly, but she had rather different priorities: “Yeah, totally - plus she’s super strong and cool. I still think Serena’s my favorite, though.”

Maxie quickly agreed, “Me too. She feels, I don’t know, real, but also incredible.”

Kate was briefly confused on multiple levels, turning around to look at the even-more-freckled Max, the girl who once kept her hair all pulled back out of her face because she was ever so serious but her parents wouldn’t let her cut her hair short like a boy, and that made her get sun burn after sun burn on her face and ears. Her first confusion was resolved when she remembered that Serena was the original English dub’s interpretation of Usagi, so she was left with the much bigger one: “I’m like … the mom?”

Maxie nodded, though she was still looking at the TV instead of Kate. “Of course! You’re always taking care of us, you know? That’s what moms do.”

Kate was stunned, and at first blathered out a little confused, quiet nonsense that successfully drew Alyssa’s attention, but not Max’s. But then, she swallowed, and tried again, “I take care of you guys?”

Finally, Maxie looked away from the screen as well, but it was clear to Kate she was focusing at some little detail on the shoulder of Kate’s pajamas, not Kate’s face. Max had gotten a lot better at hiding her aversion to eye contact since she came back to Arcadia Bay, Kate realized. You had to be pretty close to realize she stared at your lips instead of your eyes, if she was forced to look at you at all. “Of course you do. You’re on top of things and look after us. We’re Sailor Moons. You’re Sailor Jupiter.”

That cracked a grin on Kate’s face like … like she couldn’t believe. Like she hadn’t had in a long time, even that day when Max had rescued her from that bully of a security guard. Kate lurched forward a little, and wrapped her arms around Maxie’s shoulders. “Thank you so much, Max. I just want to take care of you … like you take care of me.”

Maxie physically squirmed in Kate’s embrace. “Hey, ah, you know I don’t like hugs like this unannounced. C’mon, get off - and it’s Maxie, not Max.”

Kate laughed, delighted at all these little nuances, but she heard it as if from another room. The edges of her vision turned white and everything began to brighten and shrink, sort of like she was having a panic attack. But, at the moment she thought the attack, or whatever it was, was going to overwhelm her, she found herself back in Max’s room, her arms now wrapped around the photographer, the single polaroid photograph still in her hand.

“Kate … you didn’t change anything. This is the same reality …” Max seemed concerned, but she was holding an enthusiastic Kate Marsh in her arms, and that was a rare treat for her, so she was going with it.

Kate nodded, her cheek almost against the back of Max’s neck. “Yeah … I. I don’t think I could trade this all away. I couldn’t forget. I just wanted to remember.”

Max’s breath entered sharply. “Oh, Kate,” she murmured, and squeezed Kate’s sides a little, providing a little sigh of delight from the bun-headed blonde.


	2. Taylor Christensen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor is thrown back into the moments before a traumatic moment of her life, creating a divergent timeline. It may not be enough to change what happened to her, but it is . . . better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Implicit mention of self harm, anorexia nervosa, and rape occur in the context of this fiction. This is an angst-based examination of Taylor.

Taylor had not remembered that it was here. She had been browsing through Hayden’s photo history for the past several years on Facebook, all the way back to 2008, just when everyone was abandoning Myspace for this new format. One of his earliest photographs had contained a lot of people Taylor was still close to, and a lot who hadn’t gotten into or applied to Blackwell Academy. It was of a party, or the middle school-high school equivalent of a party over at Hayden’s house - a horrible crowd-selfie containing her, Courtney, Hayden, and perhaps eight other people in Hayden’s kitchen. They hadn’t even taken the time to ensure that nobody could see they had beer out on the counter - one or two people even had Solo cups in their hands. They were so fucking stupid.

And he was in the picture. It was essentially impossible to avoid pictures of him upon occasion, but Taylor had not been prepared scrolling through such familiar territory - she just usually didn’t go this far back.  
She was sitting in Two Whales, waiting for her meal while scrolling idly through her phone. It was only about 7pm, but it seemed her nightly anxiety attack had decided to come early, and publicly. She pushed herself into the corner of the booth and pulled her denim coat tight, but she couldn’t look away from the picture just yet. This, this was how she remembered his face. Not the images that leaked into her Facebook feed upon occasion of a twenty-one year old legally drinking with his friends, just this stupid fucking teenager with no idea that he was a monster.

God, that was the night. That was the party. That’s what fucked it all up. Taylor’s hands gripped her phone tightly and her palm constricted, as if she might just burst the small hunk of metal and plastic light a super hero. That was the night. She never wanted to see it or think about it. She just wanted to crush it in the palm of her hand and make it all disappear.

Taylor felt like everything was narrowing. Like everything else was disappearing, instead of this photo, this night. Like she was being pushed through a tube, squeezed and pulled, and she began to hear things. She could not make them out, exactly, but she heard giggling, and talking, and all sorts of things that she should not be hearing, feeling heat she should not be feeling.

_Flash._

* * *

Taylor blinked against the light, and found herself huddled in a crowd of people. So many people - and they were all so small. Not just them, but her herself. They looked practically infantile.  
“Did you get the shot?” Squeaked a little voice from a black-haired girl, shorter than the rest, with shoulder-length hair. Holy shit, wait, that was Courtney!

“Well, I think so, lemme check,” Hayden said as the group dispersed, turning the camera around so he could look at the screen. It was a little off-center, but it looked like he got everyone. “Yeeaah, got it that time! Rad,” he said, finally satisfied.

As Taylor looked around, she was no less panicked than she had been a moment ago. She was surrounded by a swarm of old friends and acquaintances, just as they had been years ago. What could they be? Thirteen, fourteen? Taylor raised her hand in front of her, and found herself staring at short, tan fingers. She had used to enjoy the outdoors, and would spend a great deal of her free time like that. She was constantly sun burned because she refused to wear sun screen.

Taylor was thirteen, frozen near the center of a picture taken five years ago. This did nothing to prevent her incoming anxiety attack. Courtney was staring at her, though, while virtually everyone else seemed oblivious. Goodness she was small - unlike Taylor, she hadn’t hit puberty at quite the right stride, and hovered right around the 5′ mark until the summer of their 8th and 9th grade years. Even surrounded by young teenagers, Courtney looked like a child by comparison. It was amazing people were comfortable having her around.  
“Tay, you okay? Is something wrong?” Courtney took one of the few steps possible closer to her friend, but Taylor just shook her head.

“I’m having an anxiety attack, Courtney, what do you think?” Her breathing was rapid and shallow, and she was surrounded by people.  
Courtney seemed terribly confused: “Huh? What does that mean? What’re you talking about?”  
Right. Taylor had had to spend most of their freshmen year of high school explaining how anxiety worked to her friend with about as much emotional attachment to the circumstances around her as a rat in a Coolidge effect experiment. Her throat was killing her. “I just have to get outside. I’ll be fine,” she said, and stumbled her way between the people picking up their beers, sitting at the TV, playing games, whatever people who were too young to drive to their own parties did. Courtney did not pursue.

Outside the sliding glass door of Hayden’s house, Taylor leaned against the wooden exterior, trying to calm her breathing, but she still felt like the edges of her sight were white. Weren’t they? It looked so strange - as she peered into his back yard, it looked like the borders of her vision just gave way to white. She wasn’t even just seeing that due to hyperventilation, it was legitimately present.   
What the fuck was going on? How was any of this possible? Taylor stared down at her body, realizing she was wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt. Fallout Boy. Not a bad band, but she hadn’t worn clothes that showed her upper arms in years, she didn’t think. But that made sense, she remembered. Back then, when she was just a little girl, she had nothing to hide - it had just been a choice of demonstrating what band she liked. She rubbed her arms, as if they would provide an affirmation of reality. And to a certain extent, they did. She could feel how thin her arms were at this stage. She could not even recall the tactile memory of what her arms would be like by the time she was fifteen, sunken and cold, arm hair growing rapidly like it could protect her.

This girl, this version of Taylor whose body she was in, she had felt so safe. She was so completely different. There were no villains outside her, there was no pain inside her. Just a buzz from an absurdly small amount of alcohol, that, honestly, was probably helping to prevent a full-blown anxiety attack. She hung near the edge, but for some reason her body was not flowing over the cusp and taking all the strength from her legs.  
Still, standing was hard. She slumped down to the ground, and hugged her bare knees, just exposed due to her ripped jeans.

The sliding glass door opened again. Taylor turned, expecting to see Courtney coming after her, but instead, her heart slammed against her chest with a stab of fear. It was him.  
“Hey, are you okay? It’s Taylor, right?”  
She just stayed frozen. This was just like the first time, though she had been a little drunker. Was this some sort of horrible dream? Or was she actually here? Was she actually meant to relive this moment more tangibly than she could ever have imagined? As she felt the warmth and hardness in the skin over her own knees, she felt betrayed. She didn’t want to feel.

“Are you having anxiety, Taylor? I’m Jordan - I do counseling at the high school.”

Taylor steeled herself as well as she could, exhaling unsteadily, feeling like she was tempering a weapon somehow, like her breath cold turn itself into a blade. “No thanks,” she said, and leaned forward, placing her weight on her hands to help her stand rather suddenly. “Just leave me alone,” she said, quickly moving around him to get to the sliding glass door, leaving a wide berth between them.

Still, he took a step towards the door, and placed an arm hastily between her and it. Her made a motion to grasp her shoulder, but she quickly flinched back. He seemed terribly confused, and his face pinched to let her know it. She did not look at him. “What the fuck’s wrong with you? I’m just trying to help,” he placated, though it was laced with hostility.

Taylor turned a little, staring him in the face. Her insides already felt like they were being crushed - how much worse could his face make things? Her voice would have been a growl if she were her proper age, but they were cold enough: “Don’t fucking touch me. I’m going inside,” she snarled.

He left his hand up for a moment, but he had no idea how to respond to the venom in this small teenager. After the moment, he dropped his hand, and just let it fall limp. “Whatever, bitch,” he snapped, and leaned against the wall Taylor had been against.  
She entered back into the party, and quickly sought out Courtney. The white edges of her vision were pulling inward.

“Hey, Court, let’s get out of here, okay? I think I’m done with this party.”  
Courtney had been chatting animatedly with Hayden, and the two of them turned towards her, confused, though Courtney was the vocal one. “What? What’re you talking about? We’re sleeping over, remember? And it’s been, like, an hour. It’s like, seven, maybe.” She gave her a very pointed look.  
Taylor remembered that back then, Courtney had such a big thing for Hayden. Ever since even the earliest stages of puberty, Hayden had been considered the cutest guy, especially once he cut his hair short freshmen year and actively trying to look fresh out of a modeling catalog. It was too bad he’d ended up freaking people out so much by senior year, once he’d started having his Communist Picnics sophomore year, or that one time in English he’d tried to give a presentation on Free Love …  
Well, it’s not like she wanted Courtney getting involved in any of that, anyway.

“Yeah, I know, I just, like, I’m not feeling great - and this is a shitty plan, anyway. If we drink anymore we’re going to smell like beer when my mom picks us up in the morning.”  
Courtney’s face pinched. “My mom’s getting us in the morning …”  
Right. Courtney’s mom had not yet called to tell them she wouldn’t be able to get her for the night, because she’d gone out to party on her own. That would happen at 9pm, when Taylor came to Courtney sobbing and asking to leave, and they’d be stuck there through the night with him and everyone else.

The white was closing in. Only about forty percent of her vision remained. Her words came as if from far away. “I … let’s just call my mom, okay? I can’t stay here, I can’t …” she couldn’t hear her own words anymore - she was being pulled far, far away from them. There was a roaring in her ears as years of events moved on by …

* * *

Taylor sat in the corner of a booth in Two Whales diner, but this time, she was not alone. Sitting right next to her was Victoria, all made up as if this were a nice restaurant. That was not too weird - the strange thing was that Max Caulfield and Kate Marsh sat across from them. Max was drinking from a milkshake, while Kate had apparently discovered that the diner had access to soy icecream, and had formed a special Orange Fanta float with soy ice cream that she’d stirred into a weird … creamsicle concoction. 

Kate and Victoria, despite being placed diagonally across from one another on the table, were engaged in conversation, and did notice the way that Taylor’s eyes rapidly flicked around, taking in this new version of her surroundings. They also missed the fact that Max was doing something very similar, although after a few seconds, her eyes fell onto Taylor. Not her face, but her torso … which struck her as rather weird.

Taylor looked down, and discovered something very strange. She was wearing a t-shirt. Short sleeved. And over it, she wore a blue and white flannel, the sleeves of which had been pulled all the way up to her elbows, clearly exposing her forearms. There was nothing decorating them. No ridges of white or silver flesh. She was several pounds heavier, she could tell just from the sight of her own biceps. Her discomfort did not subside, but she was no longer experiencing the extreme distress of her previous situation.

After a moment, Max’s eyes fell from Taylor, and turned down to phone.

“You know, I’m so glad we could all get out to do this. I know it’s been busy, but I think double dates are good for the soul,” Kate said, stirring her absurd little float.

Taylor did not even process the implication of this statement, because her phone buzzed. She drew it quickly, and found a message from Max Caulfield.

> **Max:**  You just time traveled, didn’t you? What did you change?

Victoria was talking. Taylor glanced up at Max, and proceeded to give her a very, very confused, ‘what the fuck are you talking about’ look. And then, Taylor found Victoria’s lips pressed to her cheek in a tight, forceful kiss. Taylor recoiled slightly, a crimson haze developing in her cheeks. Max’s eyebrows raised a little in surprise.

“Isn’t that right, babe?” Victoria asked.

What. What. What. Was she …?

Taylor’s eyes were wide in shock. “I, uh, I’ve gotta go to the bathroom,” she sputtered. “Just like, real quick.”

Victoria’s head tilted a little in confusion, but then realized she was the obstacle keeping Taylor inside, and promptly stood up, gesturing Taylor’s way to freedom. “All right,” she responded simply, a little put-out at her girlfriend’s response.

* * *

In the bathroom, Taylor took a moment to splash water on her face, before she got the idea to look through her wallet. She kept a row of cards for all sorts of situations … and Taylor was quick to realize that she did not have several of them. Her suicide hotline card was missing. Her self harm hotline. A reference card for meeting times for an ED support group. They were gone, as was the crumpled post-it that had previously reminded her of the link to Kate’s video. A single additional card was present, however - a local shop that produced vegan baked goods, showing a pastel cupcake on the front cover.

Taylor looked back at herself in the mirror. She showed her arms. She hovered a little above her weight gain goal, which Courtney would be pleased to know … or would Courtney even know about it now? Who even was she now?

She looked up his name on her phone, on Facebook. She found that his page abruptly ended in early 2012, just after a wall of angry messages had been sent directly to his wall. A disproportionate number seemed to be from Rachel Amber … and several of them mentioned some girl named ‘Chloe’.

But the last one struck her in particular. It was from a Chloe, one ‘Chloe Price’ - her profile picture showed that she had blue hair. It read

> **Chloe Price:**  Rot in hell, asshole.

He was gone. Whatever she had changed … he did not make it free in the world into his twenties, free to get drunk with his friends through the weekends. No more would he bleed his way into her feed. That was good enough.

Now to confront the fact that, apparently, Taylor was out of the closet in this reality.


	3. Chloe Price

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chloe and Rachel meet once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please read the first part of this fic before continuing, found at the link below or as Chapter 6 of "AU Tumblr Requests": Chloe gets a blood transfusion and gains Max's powers.

_A continuation of[this fic](http://meditatemoremedicateless.tumblr.com/post/129692345399/chloe-gets-a-blood-transfusion-from-max-and-starts), in which Chloe gains Max’s rewind._

“But that’s not good enough!” Chloe cried, almost wanting to shove Max away but unable to stand on her own at this point, in every sense of the phrase. The tiny brunette just held her with surprising strength, and every part of her just felt unraveled. Rachel had, for a full two years, been everything to Chloe. Every other aspect of her life had fallen apart, and Rachel was the only thing that kept Chloe in any semblance of a human. But now she was the opposite. Now she was the thing that made Chloe feel cold and alone no matter where she was. Max stroked her back, as if it could soothe her at this point. All that was left was for her to collapse from exhaustion hours for now, Max thought.

When Max saw the crumpled image of Rachel and Chloe blow towards the edge of the cliff, at first she just thought that maybe, maybe that was best. Maybe it was right that Chloe did not continue to carry that picture around in her pocket day in and day out. Maybe . . .  
It blew over the edge, and Max could not live with that. She rewound.

“Huh?” Chloe asked, suddenly hugging air. She was somewhat used to this affair by now though, and had the good mind to look around her - it didn’t take long, as she found Max standing near the edge of the cliff, standing upright as she lifted the photograph just before it’s untimely demise. “Oh, oh, shit, thank you-” Chloe trotted over to her friend and took the picture from Max’s offered hand. She covered her mouth with her spare hand for a second and pulled it off to the side, as if she were trying to remove lipstick. “Thanks, Max. I let it go.”  
Max nodded, and took Chloe’s spare hand into her own. Chloe’s hands might be large, but Max could still wrap her hand around Chloe’s palm easily enough. She pulled the bluenette over to the bench, noted the vomit, and turned to drag her over to the map they had marked the location of their secret fort onto. They both sat on the edge of it, and after a moment of silence, Max gestured towards the crumpled picture Chloe was gazing down at.

“Tell me about it. That picture,” Max said aloud, as if it were neither a request nor a demand, but a casual observation of the circumstances, like the weather.  
Chloe nodded to herself, but stayed quiet, as if trying to recall the details again. Max gave her the time she needed as she tried to put the pieces together. “It was . . . I dunno, eight months ago. I came over after a fight with my step-shit and Mom - I don’t remember what it was about, but I was pissed off. Rach, she, um, she had a record player, and when I was angsting out, we’d listen to records. She had, like, everything recorded after the forties, although we almost never actually talked about music. She put on some, like . . . I don’t know, but I always liked Nemesis, so it might have been something from them. We sat and smoked, and we talked about moving down to LA, no warning, just packing up in the middle of the night and disappearing.  
“We were like that a lot, you know? We knew it was horseshit and everything, but the dreams are what kept me going a lot of the time. Knowing, once we got the money, we’d just be gone, and I could write letters to Mom and everything but Arcadia’d just be gone. No surprise we never did, especially ‘cause of her and Frank but . . . God, even when everything was shit, we always thought it could be  _good_ , you know? Like, it was. Nothing could stop us. Nothing.”  
Chloe choked a little, and Max rubbed her back with her free hand. Chloe had barely so much as said Rachel’s name in the past several weeks. Once Chloe had killed Jefferson, she had pretty much just shut down, shut it all out, and acted like it never happened. Well, that’s not quite right - she went to bed every night dreading her nightmares, and she rose every morning having barely slept, haunted by the ghosts of Rachel and Jefferson. Max knew, because she hadn’t had a proper night’s sleep since the day she got her powers. All she saw were bullets in Chloe’s skull, unless she was seeing Kate’s broken neck, blood slowing leaking from her mouth.

Chloe heard something . . . very strange in that moment. The words seemed to grow out of nothing, but they came from below her: _“Number nine, number nine, number nine . . .”_  she became aware, now, that this wasn’t just below her, but it was coming from the photo as if it were a speaker. She inhaled sharply.  
“Max,” she uttered quietly. “I think I hear the Beatles from the photo.”

Max paused her rubbing and looked over at her friend. “Are you . . . sure?” Her voice was soft but doubtful, as if this were just Chloe’s wishful thinking  
But Chloe nodded confidently. “I’m pretty fucking sure I know the White Album, yeah. What do I do?”  
Max took a deep breath as she tried to understand how to describe the process. “Here, um, just focus on the photo, keep trying to remember what was going on.”

Chloe just kept nodding, and there was some panic in her voice as she began again, “Okay. I guess we were listening to Revolution 9, not Nemesis. We decided we didn’t have to accept our fates here in Arcadia. We decided tonight would be the night we escaped - not seriously, but just a little fantasy. So we decided to, you know, have a little fuck-you to this shithole. That’s when we took this photo, and why she was staying so stoic. She didn’t want to show anything in front of a defeated enemy, she just wanted it to be over . . .”

The sound of the record was pulsating as if it were right at Chloe’s ear, and the image no longer seemed attached to the paper it was printed on. Instead, it was rising up, as if it were going to envelop her, but she didn’t stop, though that freaked her out. She just kept talking until suddenly, suddenly, she felt like she was being pulled down, like the Lex Luthor Drop of Doom had just reached its summit and now there was nothing, only gravity and no space, just falling.

_Flash._

Chloe blinked, and coughed as her lungs were filled with smoke. She leaned over a little, freshly light-headed and dizzy, and she found a small hand patting her back, just as there had been a second ago. Revolution Nine continued from the exact point she’d been hearing it, seamlessly.  
“You okay, Chlo? Want to take it again?” Chloe froze when she heard the voice - at least, as well as she could amidst her coughing. Still, she stuttered out a few more before she could raise her head and turn, her eyes locking onto the hazel eyes of Rachel Amber.

Chloe’s reaction was not what she would have wanted it to be. Her mouth covered her hand as she barely squeaked out: “Rachel?”  
The tiny blonde’s head cocked to the side in concern at Chloe’s sudden change of tone, brow furrowing, wide lips turning down at the shift from anger to . . . what even was this? She wasn’t even sure, in this context. Chloe tended to stay angry for longer periods than this, and sadness generally gave way to anger, not the other way around. “Yeah, what’s wrong babe?”  
Her big girlfriend didn’t respond normally, though, but instead practically lunged towards her, wrapping her in her long, muscular arms, and held her tightly against her chest - which was quite the reversal from normal. “Rachel, it’s you.”  
“Yeah, yeah, it’s me sweetie, hey there,” she assured softly, her words cresting into a high pitch made to comfort, and she quickly returned the hug, wrapping her arms around Chloe’s shoulders and holding herself a little closer to Chloe’s neck, kissing it softly. “You okay?”

Chloe tried to get control of her breathing, knowing from Max that these things did not last forever, and she’d only have so long to change the past. She put a finger under Rachel’s chin and pulled it up a little, so that she could look at Rachel clearly again. The smile that came across her face was so confused she had no idea how to decipher the emotions she was feeling, and Rachel had no way to interpret them, either. “Rach, c’mon. I know we joke about leaving, but let’s do it, okay? Let’s do it right now. Or tonight, so I can get some stuff from home, but let’s just leave, okay? Arcadia doesn’t have anything for us anymore - but like, LA could be incredible, right? Right?”

The same mix of pity, humor, and adoration that Rachel always got when Chloe brought up escaping came to her face. “It would be, Chlo, of course it would. But you know we can’t do that. We don’t have any money, I have no portfolio, barely any experience . . . but we will soon, I promise. You know that, we’ll do it.”  
“But-” Chloe protested, on the verge of tears.  
Rachel was quick to interrupt her though, not wanting to go too deep down this road. “Hey, hey, hey now. I love you.” She leaned up a little, and brought her lips to Chloe’s.  
Rachel. Rachel. Chloe only realized now that she had forgotten what she felt like. What she smelled like, what she tasted like though the day. Right now, all she could feel was the heat of the room and for that brief second Rachel’s lips again, but it stunned her, because Rachel stopped feeling like a ghost in that moment, and became real again.  
“We’ll go soon,” Rachel promised a few seconds after their kiss broke, and sat upright instead of against Chloe, leaning her forehead against her tall, crinkled girlfriend’s.

As Chloe for fumbled for words, she realized she had a secret cache available from her terribly, terribly spoken best friend. “Yo, Rach? I . . . I’ve gotta tell you something. Something . . . hardcore. But I need you to believe me, okay? No matter how crazy I sound, please just trust me.”  
Rachel nodded, her eyes just centimeters from Chloe’s, bright and blue, their eyelashes nearly touching. “I do. Tell me.”  
Chloe took a ragged breath in, and blew out as she exhaled. Then a quick breath in. Her words felt like air being dragged out of her. “I’m . . . from the future. I came back to save you.”

Rachel did not giggle, or cock her head to the side curiously, or give Chloe a puzzled look, or make a joke. None of the stuff that Chloe had expected in response. Instead, slowly, slowly, their foreheads drifted apart, and Rachel looked her in the eye from several inches away. She swallowed loudly. “So . . . I guess that means I’m dead, huh?”

Just hearing that from Rachel herself felt like a blow in Chloe’s gut, and she imagined that her breath must have escaped like a soul to a dementor’s kiss, but she was just shot in silent shock. Even back here, she could not escape that.  
A sad smile crept across Rachel’s lips. “My power moved to you, huh? You . . . can time travel.”  
Now it was Chloe’s turn for a loud swallow as her world was turned upside down, which was all that seemed to happen in the world of her and Rachel. “You . . . could do it too? You were a chrononaut like Max?”

Rachel raised herself up a little on her knees, and reached forward, running a hand through Chloe’s hair, not quite meeting her eyes anymore, instead looking at the point where she pushed her hair behind her ears. “Past tense - I really am dead, I guess. By Max do you mean . . . Caulfield? Your old friend?”  
Chloe nodded, though bothered that Rachel wasn’t answering her clearly, though it was clear enough what she meant at this point. “Yeah, she, she came back to Oregon a few months ago. We teamed up and she had super powers. She just sent me back in time, just now, through a photo. That one, the one we just took,” she said, looking down at the abandoned digital on the flood between the bed and the wall, where a tall mirror stood - that they’d been using to set up the shot.

Now Rachel’s gaze drifted even further from Chloe, and her voice began to sound distant as she realized that, sometime soon, she was going to die. She had no idea how, but she was certain it was coming. “Well . . . it’s good she got the power next, huh? But. How? How do I die?”  
Chloe’s melancholy twisted at that, returning to her eternally-accessible bitchface, though coated with more menace than Rachel was exactly used to. She was used to rage, but it was always aimless - this seemed cold and narrow, though, like a knife. “You don’t have to! It was Jefferson, Mark Jefferson, your teacher. He overdosed you, but, Rachel, Rachel, look at me-” Rachel complied, unable to disobey the intensity in Chloe’s voice right now “- I killed that motherfucker, all right? He killed me, but Max brought me back, and I killed him with with my bare fucking hands, okay? Okay, I killed that motherfucking piece of shit and i-” her words were rapidly escalating towards hysterical and unintelligible, and Rachel wrapped her arms around her again and brought her to her chest as she sat upright on her knees, a very normal position for them - and Chloe completely broke down into sobs.

Rachel’s parents didn’t even come to check; they were used to these sounds from Rachel’s room by now. Chloe cried, and Rachel comforted. It was just a sound of the house, like the records in Rachel’s record player.  
It was Chloe, though, who made an effort to resume the conversation after a minute or two. She had so much saved up - Rachel could only react as the next eight months of Chloe spilled out. “And you lied to me, Rach. You don’t just deal to the Vortex Club for Frank. You’re fucking him behind my back, and you never told me.”  
It was so strange to hear the present and the past spoken of in the same sentence as if there was nothing between them, but in this situation, there really was no difference between the past and the present - or the future and the present. Time travelers may see time differently, but they recognized its inevitability better than anyone. “Yeah . . .” Rachel said softly, knowing there was nothing she could do to make Chloe un-know that, and knowing it was not worth it in comparison to the weight of everything else. Chloe knew. She couldn’t rewind her confession to save Chloe’s feelings. Chloe knew.

“Why?” asked Chloe  
“I love him,” Rachel replied.  
They were both so deadpan in this, it was hard to recognize the immensity that this was to both of them.

Chloe’s lips were nothing but a flat line. “Don’t you love me?”  
It hurt Rachel so much to hear the tone in that. For who knows how long, Chloe had genuinely been wondering if Rachel loved her. She had been doubting it for days, or weeks, or months. Whenever she found out, she came to the conclusion that it all came at the price of Chloe herself. Rachel shook her head - not at the words, but at the genuine thought. “Of course I do, Chloe. You are my love; you’re my first love, you’re the One for Me. But I love him too. It’s complicated.”

Chloe just stared up at her, glassy-eyed and quiet, and for a moment, she got to feel something a lot like Max must feel - getting to pull out something that hadn’t happened yet in a conversation as a justification for something else. “But Frank said . . . that I was part of you problem. I was part of why you wanted to leave Arcadia. He said I couldn’t understand you.”  
Rachel felt like she was being lashed for her sins, because it was her words and thoughts coming and cutting her now - she’d never consented to have them exposed, but here they were, flushing out her pain. She swallowed again, not wanting to turn this into hostility, but still defensive: “I . . . I thought you couldn’t! I . . . we. Frank and I. I went to Frank when I was too stressed out - for drugs ‘n shit, you know. And he became part of them. He became part of my escape, like a vacation. And I love my vacation, but I love my life, too. I need you, because you’re soft and my everything, but I need him, because he’s firm. I-” she was speaking fast, a lot like Chloe often did, because there were all these things she had wanted to say for so long and now she finally could, she had to. But Chloe didn’t intend for her to finish them.

“Do you just love broken people, Rachel?”

The question was not a lash. It was a stab in the heart.  
The tears finally filled Rachel’s eyes.

“No, no, no . . . you’re not broken. You’re not broken. I love you. You’re perfect. I love you so much, Chloe, I wish you knew.”

Chloe’s hands came to Rachel’s cheeks, and they were big and soft and warm - they didn’t have the anger that Rachel expected behind them. They were just there, and they brought Rachel’s eyes along them, up towards Chloe’s. “Rachel. I can be firm and strong for you. I can do anything for you - shit, I have. I searched for you for months. I found your body. I killed your killer. I traveled through time to save you. So just do this for me: run away with me. We can even take Frank, I don’t care. Just don’t let it happen. Don’t die.”

But Rachel could see it. She could see the white rim of time closing in, creeping through her windows and shrinking her room. She shook her head, bluejay earring bobbing a little in response. “You don’t get it, do you?” she asked; “If I don’t die, you can never travel back to warn me. Max never gets my power to send you back, and I never know how to stay alive. I die all over again.”

“NO!” screamed Chloe, hands dropping from Rachel’s cheeks to her shoulders, physically shaking her in frustration. “NO! FUCK THAT! YOU CAN’T, you can’t, you can’t . . .” but she saw it too. She saw the borders of reality closing in on this freeze-frame of time. It was all coming to a close. “You can’t forget this,” she begged.

Rachel reached up, and peeled Chloe’s hands off of her shoulders, taking  them in her own. Their tears both fell down on their hands and laps. “I won’t forget, Chlo. I won’t forget. I love you - I won’t forget. I love you. I love you. I . . .” but it just kept getting quieter and quieter, as if Rachel were being muffled.

And Chloe was enveloped in white as the memory disappeared.


End file.
